Two years ago we moved to Great Falls. Even before we bought our adorable little house we purchased 40 acres of land in the mountains. We wanted a cabin real bad. If you want something real bad, you do whatever it takes to get it, and we did. We have spent the last two years making it a reality. We cashed in on some investments, spent our savings and finally went into to debt to finish funding it. Conversation have been consumed with talk of the cabin. Countless hours have been spent on the internet doing research and ordering unique items like a composting toilet and an on demand propane water heater. Millions of errands have been run, all around town, and sometimes in other towns to find just what we need/want. Hours have been spent making the 3 hour trip to the cabin and then the other 3 hours back. And now that it is so close to being completely done (on the inside), we spend every weekend up there. We love it!
But like children and pets, if you don’t give a home attention, it will do anything, even misbehave to get your attention. After all bad attention is better than no attention? When we first moved into our little home, we painted, cleaned, arranged and decorated. It looked pretty nice. What we didn’t want to deal with, we stuck in the garage and put it on our list of someday we’ll get to it. You know, someday when we aren’t doing anything with the cabin. Sure we did a little bit of home improvement. We replaced the sidewalk out front (before the city fined us for having one in such poor condition), and we replaced the sidewalk from the house to the garage so that it is actually functional. We even did a little bit of gardening…just a little.
That was just surface stuff, we knew the house needed some maintenance. It’s an older house, of course it needs maintenance. But we put it off, and put it off. Procrastinated, delayed, postponed, deferred, drug our feet, dawdled, poked about, we pretty much just lolly gagged about anything except immediate things in our home. What happens when you procratinate? It comes to nip you in the rear, nip is too gentle of word, it really tears you a new one. The reality is what might have been minor now becomes major.
What all home owners (who have a basement) dread….is water. Standing water in the basement. Mcgyver woke up last Thursday morning to a flood (I was already at work). He called me in panic mode, unfortunately I was the only manager at work so I couldn’t leave till later to help out. He and the Baby boy had to move things to the “dry” side of the basement. I showed up and helped, we filled the halls.
We stacked and shoved things to the other side to prevent water damage.
We sucked up water, turned on fans, turned OFF the air conditioning and opened windows (while it was 90 degrees out).
We sucked up gallons and gallons of water (thank heavens for our wet/dry shop vac).
We mopped, McGyver used towels and even the dirty laundry to suck up the water.
And then we surveyed.
Ewww, this can’t be good.
And this can’t be good either.
Bad news folks, bad news. But on the bright side, my laundry room floor is the cleanest it’s ever been!
We had plumbers come in and try to figure out what was going on, they decided that it was a negative drainage issue. That our gutters need to be replaced. It did rain heavy the night before. As a matter of fact, it’s rained so much this summer that the ground is so saturated that it can’t absorb any more of the water, so into the house it goes.
Then that evening the Baby boy took a shower. That evening we ended up sucking up another 50 gallons of water. Negative drainage? I’m not convinced, neither is McGyver.
So he took some precautions to prevent more flooding.
I keep hoping that they’ll say “Sanitized for you use”. Like I’m in some hotel and my basement doesn’t exist.
Guess what we did that weekend?
Yup, we went to the cabin, guess what we are doing this weekend and next weekend? Yup, going to the cabin. Don’t judge, it’s an obession, we can’t help ourselves.
Do they have counseling groups for that?
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